In other words, the ramps are one way. It’s not possible to pull into the front area for cars, then change your mind and drive back here without going a considerable distance the wrong way on the ramp and risk hitting someone. And I would guess there was a fair amount of travelers on the road last night, since it’s Labor Day weekend.”
“Right. I know that. It don’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that somebody intended to ditch the Jeep exactly where it is because there were probably a lot of cars parked in front last night. So he takes the ramp for trucks and buses. Probably was pretty deserted back here. Nobody sees him, and he splits.”
“He may also not have wanted the Jeep found right away, explaining why it’s well off the pavement,” I said Marino stared off toward the woods and said, “I’m getting too old for this.”
A perpetual complainer, Marino had a habit of arriving at a crime scene and acting as if he did not want to be there. We had worked with each other long enough for me to be used to it, but this time his attitude struck me as more than an act His frustration went deeper than the canceled fishing trip. I wondered if he had had a fight with his wife.
“Well, well,” he mumbled, looking toward the brick building.”
The Lone Ranger’s arrived.”
I turned around as the lean, familiar figure of Benton Wesley emerged from the men’s room. He barely said “hello” when he got to us, his silver hair wet at the temples, the lapels of his blue suit speckled with water as if he had just washed his face. Eyes fixed impassively on the Jeep, he slipped a pair of sunglasses from his breast pocket and put them on.
“Has Mrs. Harvey gotten here yet?”
he asked.
“Nope,” Marino replied.
“What about reporters?”
“Nope,” Marino said.
“Good.”
Wesley’s mouth was firmly set, making his sharp featured face seem harder and more unreachable than usual I would have found him handsome were it not for his imperviousness. His thoughts and emotions were impossible to read, and of late he had become such a master at walling off his personality that I sometimes felt I did not know him.
“We want to keep this under wraps as long as possible,” he went on. “The minute the word’s out all hell is going to break loose.”
I asked him, “What do you know about this couple, Benton?”
“Very little. After Mrs. Harvey reported them missing early this morning, she called the Director at home and then he called me. Apparently, her daughter and Fred Cheney met at Carolina and had been dating since their freshman year. Both of them supposedly good, clean-cut kids. No history of any sort of trouble that might account for them getting tangled up with the wrong type of person out here – at least according to Mrs. Harvey. One thing I did pick up on was she had some ambivalence about the relationship, thought Cheney and her daughter spent too much time alone.”
“Possibly the real reason for their wanting to drive to the beach in a separate car,” I said.
“Yes,” Wesley replied, glancing around. “More than likely that was the real reason. I got the impression from the Director that Mrs. Harvey wasn’t keen on Deborah’s bringing her boyfriend to Spindrift. It was family time. Mrs. Harvey lives in D.C. during the week and hadn’t seen much of her daughter and two sons all summer. Frankly, I have the feeling that Deborah and her mother may not have been getting along very well of late, and may have had an argument right before the family headed off to North Carolina yesterday morning.”
“What about the chance the kids might have run off together?”
Marino said. “They was smart, right? Would read the papers, watch the news, maybe saw the stuff about these couples on that TV special the other week. Point is, they probably knew about the cases around here. Who’s to say they didn’t pull something? A pretty slick way to stage a disappearance and punish your parents.”